A Winter Law
by ToastnJam
Summary: The canvas is blank. The ledger is red. And Loki is alone.


A Winter Law

"The nut tree, wide above my head, stretching its cool black limbs to take the sun, sends darkness down my chest. Its dappled, highcrowned roadways make safe homes for birds; quick squirrels run the veins of its treasure-giving hand; but the ground below is dead.

Strange providence! Shall I call the tree tyrannical, since where it stands nothing survives but itself and its high- borne guests? Condemn it because it sends down stifling darkness, sucks the life from grass, and whitens the sapling leaf for trifling, fluttering friends?

The law of the world is a winter law, and casual. I too can be grim: snatch my daylight by violent will and be glorified for the deed, like him; drain my soil of Considerations, grip my desires like underground stones, let old things sicken and fail.

She touches my hair and smiles, kind, trusting the rhetoric of love: Give and get. But the thought flits through my mind, There have got to be stabler things than love. The blurred tree towering overhead consumes the sun; the ground is dead; I gasp for rain and wind."

- John Gardner, _Grendel_

* * *

And gasp - he does that in the water of an ocean, the water of Father's single eye. Staring down almost imperious, and Loki would like to stare back, to strike fear, to bare his monster-teeth. How dare the world? the words are there, half formed on his silver tongue. He mustn't be thinking. He knows how the world dares. He knows and can't say anything, that is his curse. The stitches itch.

The black hair pools around him in a film on the surface.

And the waves come crashing to lick his face. The dogs did that once (more than that), at the palace. The big wolf dogs with salt on their tongues. Had he laughed? Had he smiled? Once, he must have. Once, for the one time he was kissed.

For what but a dog would kiss skin that is bluer than the water and shines with diamond etchings (scars, imperfections, mutilations)? Flower-bud horns make his forehead feel crowded. New teeth coming in in all the wrong places, that's what they ache like.

He blinks the salt from his cinnamon eyes. They sting. They shouldn't, should never sting.

He freezes droplets for spite.

The others look down from the fjords and are revolted by the monster. Drown it, they are thinking. Why should it not drown, since its bones are dense as ice?

And the glacial water is boiling on his skin. He swam here as a child. With Thor. And it was cold, so cold, and his skin blued in the way that pink skin does. They had joked about Giants.

Creatures roil beneath. Damn them all with a string of feeble, chained magic.

Sheep clouds, fat and slow for slaughter. Blood will be spilt tonight, to cleanse the world of the atrocities it has witnessed.

The Giant gulps and splutters as well as he can, limbs frothing, face hideous in its color. An artist's ugly picture, with his pinpricked red lips matching his eyes. Heavy in his clothes, but not so big as his relatives.

Leather-strap buckles first. The jacket is swollen tight around him. The buckles first, so he can focus on something.

From the cliffside, the Aesir prince watches the not-execution with a solemn face. His golden curls buffet in the wind, as does his fresh red cloak. Loki knows that under that cloak he wears a white lace-up tunic and grey trousers, sewn by Mother. Loki has seen.

Concentration is hard. Relax. Breathe, though you are burning with feverish cold.

Escape artist with cuffed hands, pawing at his straightjacket in the dark.

Thor's frown will etch lines in his face, if he holds onto it. That's right, Brother-mine. Will you mourn in your old age?

It's cowhide leather, but expensive because the hands that tanned it were fine. It has been loved, thinks Loki. The buckles come loose and the straps too and he splits the seams at his sharp elbows and squirms out.

He regrets to see it sink. Why regret, Foul Thing? It has been loved by a beast. Better to be loved by the fishes.

Still, his tunic is heavy in the brine.

As he is drowning, Loki thinks of his lost jacket, to keep his mind from dwelling on the larger things.

Thor thinks of the seabirds that circle above. He wishes hard that Loki should be one of them, flying free and guileless in the pasture grey sky.

And Thor cannot watch as Baby Brother is tugged at by the current, cannot watch as he sheds the leather that is his hard shell and is left in silken tunic and trousers torn to ribbons by his thrashing legs.

The Golden Prince's eyes are the deepest cerulean oceans, if Loki would only look.

But how can he? To look without lips is to look without judgement, and to look without judgment is to look with vulnerability. And to look with vulnerability is to look upon death. What a fine jacket it was. What a fine jacket.

He remembers the lies that hung in the Allfather's half-blind gaze:

"I bind you, my child." And he is bound, helpless.

"I kiss you, my child." And he is kissed, empty.

"I love you my child." And he is "loved", as a treasure is.

"And I cast you upon these rocks so that you might find peace. May the ocean guide you or be your destruction."

The raw, delicate stitches - by Mother's soft hands - blister in the salt.

* * *

Notes: Will be longish, spanning from the end of the Avengers till the events of Ragnarok (Destiny of the Gods, In Which Loki Screws Everything Up). I hope to root this in Norse mythology and still include the Avengers, New York, and all the things we love on Earth. Sorry for the terrible formatting on the poem; I couldn't get it right and I just gave up cuz I'm lazy and really bad at technology. Merry Christmas :)


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